Shayne pulled McGranahan around.
“Give him mouth-to-mouth,” he snapped. “Open his mouth and blow into it hard. Keep it up till somebody tells you to stop. Tim.”
He stepped back among the trees. The bedroom wall, which Shayne had dived through a moment before, was now a sheet of flames. The building was going fast.
“I’ve got to stay out of sight. Find the highway patrolman and see if you can get his keys. It shouldn’t be hard if he’s unconscious. I need to get rid of this wheel.”
“Mike, was Maslow dead when you picked him up?”
“How should I know? I didn’t listen for a heartbeat. Is your helicopter still around?”
“Yeah, at Tallahassee airport.”
“I want to borrow it.”
The last section of roof fell in, and the flames swirled up with the roar of a waterfall. As Rourke started away, Shayne heard the cry of an outboard motor.
He came forward, frowning. The parking lot was still blocked, and Shayne thought he had immobilized the boats. Swearing, he set out on a wide circle around the fire. He was on the wrong side of the driveway. He hesitated before stepping out of the shadows.
The second state highway patrolman, the younger of the two, was walking toward him. Shayne saw him too late.
“I’m Michael Shayne,” he said crisply. “Move your cruiser out to the gate and don’t let anybody leave before the city cops get here. This is going to be a hell of a story. A senator’s dead.”
The patrolman rubbed his mouth and looked wonderingly at the steering wheel. “I only had this job two days, and something like this has to happen. What did you say that name was, again?”
Shayne snapped it out like a command. An instant later he was among the trees.
The outboard motor seemed to be moving straight across the lake. Shayne broke into a run. The boathouse was burning from the roof down. The light of the flames showed him both boats where he had left them. He fished the spark plugs out of his pocket and screwed them in. He tried the ignition, and the motor answered with a full-throated roar.
Shayne backed out of the slot and wheeled about in a wide arc. Behind him, the boathouse rafters came down in a shower of sparks. He throttled down until he could hear the other motor, and aimed at the sound.
He must have been visible against the fire, but he wasn’t able to pick up the other boat until he was three-quarters of the way across. He tried dashboard knobs until he found the one that turned on the front light. He was up to full power, and the gap was narrowing. The smaller boat bore to the left, aiming at the shore at the nearest point.
Shayne crossed its wake, then cut sharply to his own left and shot past. He had the wheel over hard. The other boat, merely a fishing skiff with a motor clamped to its stern, sprang into outline. It carried two people, a man and a woman.
A flash of light winked at Shayne.
He completed his circle and came back, aiming at the point where the two arcs would intersect. There was another flash. He ducked, holding the wheel steady. He counted to five slowly, before raising his head for a quick look.
The girl at the tiller of the outboard-it was Lib Patrick-had heeled too far over for the boat’s speed, and it was bucking badly. Shayne changed course, then gave the wheel a sudden half-spin. The boats missed by inches, and the smaller boat nearly capsized.
Shayne came back at full speed. Both figures in the boat were waving. Their boat seemed to be settling, stern first.
The motor, no longer running, was almost under water. Again Shayne passed within inches. The skiff rocked violently and shipped more water.
He came around for another pass. He roared down, swinging the wheel at the last possible instant. The skiff was barely afloat. Sam Rapp, behind Lib, was knee-deep in water, his face disfigured.
Shayne completed the top loop of a long figure-eight and started back. The skiff was gone. As he approached the spot where he had seen it last, his headlight picked up the two figures in the water.
Lib cried, “Mike, he can’t swim!”
Shayne wheeled around in a slow, contracting circle. Picking up a cork cushion he scaled it out as he passed. It skidded over the choppy water and Lib grabbed it.
Shayne cut his power and continued to tighten the loops until the boat lost way.
Lib called urgently, across the ten yards that separated them, “I can’t hold him! He’s going under.”
“Will I get shot if I pull you in?” Shayne asked quietly.
“He didn’t know it was you. Please. I can’t-”
“Hang on and don’t panic,” Shayne said without sympathy. “How deep is it, can you stand?”
“No!”
“Give me a minute. Maybe I can think of something.”
He looked around the deck and found a coiled line. After lashing a buoy to its free end he tossed it out. He felt the tug as she took hold, like a trout striking.
He reeled them in. When he felt the bump he kept tension on the line but made no attempt to haul them aboard.
“What happened to the gun?”
“Mike-for the love of God! I don’t know. It’s at the bottom of the lake. Please, please.”
Shayne twisted the line around a cleat and pointed his flashlight over the side. Lib was clutching the rope. Sam was clutching Lib, using the classic front-stranglehold.
“Mike,” she gasped.
“O.k., I believe you. Sam first.”
Reaching down, he grasped Sam’s collar. She had to claw herself loose. The little man proved to be surprisingly light.
Shayne hauled him over the side and dropped him on deck, where he lay on his stomach coughing out lake water. Before leaving him, Shayne gave him a fast one-handed frisk to be sure he was no longer armed.
Lib reached up for Shayne’s hand. He put the flashlight beam in her eyes.
“I’ve got the advantage for the time being,” he said coldly, “and I’d better hold onto it. What clothes are you wearing?”
“What clothes?”
“Yeah. And don’t repeat everything I say. It annoys me.”
“You ripped off my dress, don’t you remember? You know what I’m wearing. I found a sweatshirt in the boat and put it on.”
“What else?”
“Well, a bra and-Mike, you know, the regular things. I’m not concealing a gun, if that’s what you mean. Please help me get out.”
“Hand up your clothes. You can keep the sweatshirt. I want everything else.”
“Mike, why?”
When he answered only by snapping his fingers she said angrily, “All right, damn you.”
The bra came up first, then a garter belt, pants, and, finally, stockings. Shayne tested the seams before tossing each garment aside.
“Now I’m going to ask you a couple of questions.”
“Let me get in the boat? I’ll tell you anything you want to know. I’m afraid of eels.”
Shayne laughed. “They’ve got sense enough to be afraid of you. Who’s this girl named Anne? Blonde, with an English accent. You know the one I mean.”
“She’s just a face and a name. One of the others recommended her.”
“What is she, a call girl?”
“If you have to have a label.”
“Call girls don’t usually carry guns. It’s all this money floating around-everybody seems to want some. Where did the fire start?”
“I don’t know. I was making a drink. There was a kind of flash and all the walls were burning at once.”
“An explosion?”
“No bang or anything. More like a pop.”
“Did you and Sam give orders to let Tim Rourke in?”
“Apparently Grover did that.”
“Why?”
“He keeps doing dumb things. He’s so sick of his job, he wants to make sure his father doesn’t run again.”
“How much of that six hundred thousand have you and Sam spent so far?”
“You’ll have to ask Sam.”
“I could do that, but you’re the one in the water.”
“I guess most of it’s gone, Mike, I don’t know exactly. Five hundred?”
“How much of that went to Judge Kendrick?”
“You know I can’t tell you that, Mike.”
Returning to the cabin, Shayne cranked the engine and headed out toward the middle of the lake. Sam staggered into the doorway.
“Lib-”
“It’s a game, Sam. She knows I don’t mean it.” He throttled down and looked at Sam curiously. “Have you had a checkup lately?”
“Why?”
“You must be pushing sixty-five. It’s time you slowed down.”
“Don’t I know it,” Sam said bitterly.
“How do you explain all this? You were shooting at me a couple of minutes ago. How long since you shot at anybody?”
Sam sighed heavily. “Years.”
“Maybe I’d be doing you a favor if I cut her loose in the middle of the lake.”
“She’s a fair swimmer. She’d make it.”
They looked at each other for a moment. Then, switching off the power, he moved Sam out of the doorway and returned to the cleat, where he checked the line. In a moment Lib’s head appeared over the side. He loosened the half-hitch he had taken around the cleat and she fell back in the water.
“I asked you about Judge Kendrick,” he said.
“Are you taping this?”
“You never know, do you? It’s an electronic business these days.”
“Can I have a minute alone with Sam?”
“No.”
“Because we might be able to work something out. It’s tricky. I’m not trying to bribe you. I know you better than that, after we shot at you and tried to put you in jail overnight. That gives you an incentive. But Mike, there’s a way you could really clean up, you could clear an easy fifty thousand dollars without going unethical in any way-”
Shayne kept quiet.
“Mike, pull me out. I have to see your face, to watch how you react. If I do this wrong-”
She thought a moment more, and then said decisively, “No. I can’t take the chance. I’d have to be 100 percent sure we weren’t talking into a microphone. So screw you, Mike, to be vulgar about it. Go ahead, untie the rope or whatever. I won’t drown.”
“All right.” Shayne began working at the knot.
Her voice rose. “This isn’t all so gay and carefree, you know. People could get killed.”
“People already have got killed.”
“Gregory’s guy, I know. Sam and I both cried.”
“I mean Sheldon Maslow.”
Sam came careening along the deck and seized Shayne’s arm. “Maslow? Did you say Maslow?”
Lib, from the water, said, “How did he-”
“Let’s all calm down,” Shayne said. “Let go of my arm, Sam.”
After an instant Sam released Shayne’s arm and collapsed on the padded bench along the boat’s side. Shayne decided to find out how they communicated with each other.
“I’m pulling you in now,” he told the girl in the water, “but I’m a little short-tempered so do it my way.”
“Give me something to put on.”
“Not yet,” he said, reaching down to take her hand.
He pulled, and she came up the side and leaped on deck, dripping. Her white hair was a mess, falling stringily about her face. She dragged at the bottom of the sweatshirt. It came down just about far enough.
“Mike, this is silly. Let me get dressed. I feel so exposed.”
Shayne aimed the flashlight in another direction. “Now hold your hands out to the side. Straight out. Further than that, and hold still. I’m going to search you.”
“Search me!” she said indignantly. “I haven’t got one stitch on except this sweatshirt.”
Sam rumbled a warning behind Shayne.
Shayne said sharply without turning, “Don’t try anything, Sam. And Lib, for God’s sake stop being coy. We’re all over voting age. I’ll just call your attention to this Cadillac steering wheel. I’ve already knocked out one set of teeth with it, and I’m ready to knock out two more. Are you listening, damn you?”
“Yes,” Lib said.
“Sam?”
“Yeah.”
“O.k. I still don’t know what the hell you people think you’re doing. Maybe you’re imbeciles-maybe. You laid fifteen thousand on the line to put me out of circulation till tomorrow. I know I wasn’t trying to corrupt Grover. But unless I can fill in a few blank places on the map, I think they may be able to stick me with it. That’s a three-to-ten year jolt.”
“The charges will be dropped tomorrow morning as soon as the senate votes,” Lib assured him.
“You don’t know the law, baby. The complainant can’t drop the charges. All you can do is refuse to appear. Boyer saw me offering the money. He heard me working toward a top price of fifty thousand, and because of that smash in the mouth he won’t be feeling like giving me any breaks.”
Again her arms began to drop. He lifted the steering wheel.
“Lib.”
“Yes, Mike,” she said in a hurry.
“I’m checking a theory. There’s no use buying votes unless you can make sure you’re getting what you pay for. Maybe you threw this party to collect blackmail on your guests, but that’s the dirty way to do it. A series of statements on tape would be just as good.”
“Mike, we’d implicate ourselves.”
“You’d put them around privately, so no other lobbyist would trust the same people again. You and Grover were having a serious talk tonight in a locked bedroom. I searched the room after you left and I didn’t find anything.”
She said suddenly, “So that’s why you-”
“Sure,” Shayne said when she stopped. “That’s why I gave you the alcohol rub, without the alcohol. Don’t worry about it, Sam. She walked out before I got to any of the interesting places.”
He reached for the sweatshirt. She moved back.
“You’re right, Mike. I’ll give it to you.”
“I don’t want it to end up in the lake. I’ve gone to too much trouble.”
Letting the steering wheel dangle, he lifted her sweatshirt and found a long cylindrical recorder taped beneath her breasts.
She shivered away. “Damn you, will you hurry? I’m embarrassed.”
She winced as he freed the recorder. He glanced at it briefly and dropped it into his pocket.
“Japanese, no doubt. What will they think of next? Now we’ll talk about Senator Maslow.”
He stepped out of the way so they could look at each other, and saw her eyebrows come down warningly.
“Don’t try any cops’ tricks, Mike,” she said quietly. “How did it happen?”
“He was in a bedroom closet. There were two holes bored in the door and he had an infra-red flashbulb in his pocket. I didn’t find a camera. The way it looked, or the way it was meant to look, he was taking pictures as people went in and out. If the pictures were lurid enough he could use them as ammunition. A monotonous way to spend an evening, and he had a bottle of bourbon to keep him company. He was asleep when I saw him. I locked the door and took the key with me. Then the fire broke out. I was handcuffed to a steering wheel. I didn’t get there in time.”
“He died in the fire?”
“Apparently. But if we can find out who started the fire, if it turns out to be somebody who had a motive for killing Maslow and knew he was unconscious in a locked room, we can get a conviction for manslaughter. That’s my ambition right now.”
“How can you prove who started the fire? Everybody was high as a kite, walking around with candles-”
“I didn’t say it would be easy.”
She gave Sam a quick look as he started to speak. “We’d better start thinking in terms of a lawyer.”
“If you want to do it that way,” Shayne said. “He’ll tell you about the law on conspiracy. If you’ve got a common purpose they can get you whether or not you struck the match yourself.”
“Hand me my pants, Mike.”
“If you have anything to say now would be a good time to say it, while I’m still moving around.”
“I’d say the conversation is over, wouldn’t you, Sam?”
“Just about,” Sam said. He hesitated. “Mike, I wish you’d go someplace, it would be better for everybody, yourself included, but I know how you operate. Just the same, don’t let this bribery business with Grover and the cop weigh too much-I’ve got friends, I’ll straighten it out in the morning.”
“By making a statement that you set it up?”
“No-o. It was all a misunderstanding. You know. Grover can say it was his money, he was trying to hire you away.”
Shayne shook his head. “They’ll still have me for assaulting a police officer. They like to get convictions on that.” He went to the cabin and started the engine. Lib and Sam conferred in low voices while Shayne came about. He looked back once while he headed for the opposite shore, and saw her getting into her wet underclothes.
The fire was still burning strongly, but without the wildness it had had at first. Shayne was angling to the left, aiming at a spot a quarter mile from the burning building and the people around it.
“How are you going to work this?” Lib said from the doorway.
“I’m going to let you walk. Then I have to get rid of this steering wheel. After that I’ll need a fifteen-minute start. Right about here should do it.”
The motor idling, he drifted in toward a public boat-landing, a wooden ramp and a shack selling bait and soft drinks. It appeared deserted.
“You can follow the shore, or take the driveway out to the road, depending on how embarrassed you are about your costume.” He glanced at her. “You look pretty good, as a matter of fact.”
Her hand went to her hair. “I do not.”
“I don’t think it’s over your head here.”
“Mike, you mean it, don’t you?”
“I mean it.”
She drew a deep breath and slipping over the side, lowered herself into the water. It rose as high as her waist.
“Mud,” she said. “Squishy and probably full of broken glass. Coming, Sam?”
Sam gave a snort of laughter. He slid awkwardly into the water.
“However it works out, Mike, things are usually interesting when you’re around.”
“I don’t think it’s so damn funny,” Lib said grimly. “If I cut an artery, Mike, I’m going to collect as much blood from you as I lose.”
Shayne swung the flashlight around and lit their way to shore. He left them arguing in front of the bait shack.